Like Tom and Barbara in the TV sitcom, many Irish people are throwing off the shackles of city life and opting for self-sufficency with a country smallholding, writes Mark Keenan

The popular 1970s’ comedy series The Good Life was inspired by the late John Seymour, a former African gold-miner, fishing-boat skipper, broadcaster, writer and war hero, today acknowledged to be the godfather of the modern self-sufficiency movement.

His book, The Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency, first published in 1975 and recently reissued, has now sold more than half a million copies.

One of only two officers out of 40 from his regiment to survive the jungles of Burma, Seymour was a rugged adventurer, and about as far removed as you could get from the woolly wuss portrayed by Richard Briers in the television series.

Before his death in 2004, aged 90, he’d set up an international school for self-sufficiency in Ireland, just outside New Ross, Co Wexford.

The school, today manned by his longtime colleagues Will and Angela Sutherland, is receiving an unprecedented number of inquiries from aspiring Irish smallholders.